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JAY SARTORI has been appointed to the position of Assistant General Manager. The Lynnfield, Massachusetts native, most recently was the Director, Baseball Operations for the Washington Nationals organization. Prior to his appointment with the Nationals, he had spent the previous four years as Manager of Salary and Management Administration in Major League Baseball’s Labor Relations Department.

In a news release, the Jays said Sartori has “expert knowledge of salary arbitration [amateur] draft bonus recommendations.” While at MLB, he was the main contact person for clubs seeking advice on contract issues.

Upon becoming general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, Alex Anthopoulos found the one man he could not do without was himself.

Formerly the top dog in Toronto’s front office when it came to transaction rules, waiver drafts, salary arbitration hearings and the like, Anthopoulos found he remained mired in all those arcane procedural rules of baseball even after taking over when the team fired J.P. Ricciardi last October.

So Anthopoulos hired Jay Sartori, formerly of the Washington Nationals, as Toronto’s new assistant general manager.

“This will free me up a little bit,” said Anthopoulos, who also recently brought on his own executive assistant. “Doing contracts really sucked a lot of time. Before, when I was working under J.P., it was fine because J.P. handled most of the day-to-day issues with the team — the manager, the 25-man roster, media and all that stuff — and I was able to do all the other stuff. [Now] my time was spread much too thin.”

One of his first orders of business will be helping craft a strategy to deal with major league home run leader Jose Bautista.

The outfielder/third baseman, who is eligible for a final year of arbitration, will have few comparables in MLB history after jumping from near obscurity to a season of around 50 home runs.

“We haven’t really discussed it fully, I’ve been in the office only for a day now,” said Sartori. “I don’t think it would solely be my responsibility to do that alone. I think it’s a team effort.”